Inverting the Holocaust

One of the most infuriating things found in antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda is the comparison of Israel and Jews to Nazis. But it’s much more sinister than simply a way of raising my blood pressure:

The false accusation of Holocaust inversion-the portraying of Israel, Israelis, and Jews as Nazis-is a major distortion of history. This anti-Semitic concept claims that Israel behaves against the Palestinians as Germany did to the Jews in World War II. “The victims have become perpetrators,” is one major slogan of the inverters. By shifting the moral responsibility for genocide, Holocaust inversion also contains elements of Holocaust denial…

The core motif of classic anti-Semitism was that Jews embody the most extreme malevolence. During the postwar era, the Nazi regime has become the paradigm for absolute evil. Comparing Israel’s conduct to its actions is a new mutation of this ancient theme…

American historian Deborah Lipstadt has also pointed out this method of establishing a fraudulent proposition as a historical truth. She says about the historical writer and Holocaust-denier David Irving: “Irving realized that a pre-condition for Nazism’s resurrection was to strip and wash it of its worst elements. The first important tool to accomplish this was the creation of immoral equivalencies, essentially a balance of bad behavior”…

This malicious identification of Israelis as Nazis is intended to free Europeans of their remorse and shame for their centuries-long history of lethal anti-Semitism. Above all, it liberates Europeans from any residual guilt they might have experienced in the wake of the Shoah. If the Israelis-who are, after all, mostly Jews-can be depicted as Nazis, then not having helped them during World War II might not have been misbehavior. — Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Holocaust inversion is a potent part of the arsenal of propaganda weapons used by those who wish to delegitimize Israel preparatory to destroying her. Dr. Gerstenfeld, chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, has written a major article characterizing and explaining it, which I urge you to read.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 10:43 am and is filed under Antisemitism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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